RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19324/iran-eu-double-standard

The European Union’s charter stresses that “Human rights are at the heart of EU relations with other countries and regions. The European Union is based on a strong commitment to promoting and protecting human rights, democracy and the rule of law worldwide”. This is clearly not the case when it comes to the EU’s appeasing relationship with the ruling mullahs of Iran.

Meanwhile, Germany, which preaches about human rights and its “feminist foreign policy”, has actually increased its business with the Iranian regime.

If the EU truly desires to stand with the women of Iran and human rights, it can halt its business dealings and trade with Iran. Other reasons for the EU to cease enriching this toxic regime include its delivery of weapons to Russia and support for militia and terror groups. These include the Houthis fighting a war in Yemen; Hizballah, close to wrecking Lebanon; and Hamas, torturing the people of Gaza and crushing dissent for more than a decade.

By prioritizing its business and trade with Iran over promoting human rights and countering terrorism, the EU is emboldening and empowering the expansionist regime of Iran to suppress and kill more of its citizens, stamp out the women-led revolution for freedom, supply Russia with more weapons, and sponsor more terrorist groups worldwide.

The European Union’s charter stresses that “Human rights are at the heart of EU relations with other countries and regions. The European Union is based on a strong commitment to promoting and protecting human rights, democracy and the rule of law worldwide”. This is clearly not the case when it comes to the EU’s appeasing relationship with the ruling mullahs of Iran.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19314/turkey-putin-western-interests

For Putin, Erdoğan’s friendship is growing ever more important — and vice versa.

Turkey has refused to join Western sanctions against Russia over Ukraine, thereby throwing a lifeline to Putin. Turkish skies remain open to Russian airlines and its doors open to hundreds of thousands of Russians and their money. Turkish exports to Russia are surging. In July alone, exports to Russia shot up by a dizzying 75% year-on-year.

Russian cash helped plug the growing hole in Turkey’s foreign currency reserves — at a time when Erdoğan needs foreign money for the country’s ailing economy before the presidential and parliamentary elections this June.

In March, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said that Russian oligarchs were welcome in Turkey. In October, the Financial Times reported that between January and August 2021, a record $28 billion from unclear origins had flowed into Turkey.

“Putin’s goal remains anchoring Erdoğan more and more to Russia through a vast mesh of mutually beneficial operations in the fields of defense, energy, trade, and finance… By doing this, Putin is comforting an embattled incumbent president and is openly bolstering Erdoğan’s position in the upcoming elections…. [T]he world is witnessing the Russian president using Turkey for his own benefits.” — Marc Pierini, senior fellow at Carnegie Europe and a former EU Ambassador to Ankara, August 30, 2022.

The Erdoğan-Putin bond has two main pillars. One is pragmatism: They both strategically, politically and economically benefit. The other is ideological: They both hate the West.

Turkish Islamists, especially neo-Ottomans, have historically hated Russia — both Czarist and Soviet. Similarly, Russians and Soviets have never been great fans of the Turks — both Ottoman and republican. Today, however, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, with a big foot in NATO, is exhibiting a pro-Russian tilt never seen before, and at a time when Russian President Vladimir Putin is seen as an existential threat to Western interests. What is the secret behind this sudden marriage?

https://www.frontpagemag.com/how-facebook-stifles-ex-muslims-in-norway/

Thanks to Elon Musk, we’re now beginning to see solid evidence of the remarkable degree to which the social-media giants – in collaboration with Democratic politicians, intelligence agencies, and the corporate media –have striven to stifle their ideological opponents. But even the Twitter Files, at least the ones that have been made public so far, don’t satisfactorily convey the worldwide extent of Silicon Valley’s mischief. One of the most egregious cases that have come to my own attention recently is that of Ex-Muslims of Norway (EX-MN), which describes itself on its website as standing “for universal rights and secularism” and for the right of Muslims to criticize their religion and, if they wish, to leave it. The members of EX-MN emphasize their identity as ex-Muslims “because we will not be done with Islam until the Islamic mentality is modernized or Islam is cast onto the rubbish heap of history.”

Founded in 2016 by three writer/journalists – the Turkish-born Cemal Knudsen Yucel, the Iranian-born Lily Bandehy, and the late Iraqi–born Walid al-Kubaisi – EX-MN opposes forced marriage; polygamy; genital mutilation; child hijab; burkas; sexual segregation; taxpayer financing for religious institutions; religious intimidation and threats; and blasphemy laws. And it supports untrammeled freedom of speech. By way of promoting these worthy stances, EX-MN holds seminars, takes part in international conferences and demonstrations, sends its members to speak in schools and at public events, and posts videos on YouTube (most of them in English) about such topics as Koran burning, the concept of “Islamophobia,” pro-hijab Western feminists, and Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2023/01/17/demographic-crisis-looms-in-china-with-first-drop-in-population-in-six-decades-n1662449

China’s population fell for the first time in six decades last year as the nation’s population of 1.4 billion declined by about 850,000.

Short term, this is just a blip on the radar. But China also is afflicted with a rapidly aging population, which means that China is very likely to get old before it gets rich.

“China’s demographic and economic outlook is much bleaker than expected. China will have to adjust its social, economic, defense and foreign policies,” said demographer Yi Fuxian.

“Economic growth will have to depend more on productivity growth,” added Zhiwei Zhang, chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management.

Reuters:

China’s birth rate last year was just 6.77 births per 1,000 people, down from a rate of 7.52 births in 2021 and marking the lowest birth rate on record.

The number of Chinese women of childbearing age, which the government defines as aged 25 to 35, fell by about 4 million, Kang said.

The death rate, the highest since 1974 during the Cultural Revolution, was 7.37 deaths per 1,000 people, which compares with a rate of 7.18 deaths in 2021.

Contrast those numbers with the U.S., where our births per thousand people were 12.01 and deaths per thousand were 6.98. Eventually, with fewer and fewer productive workers to support China’s aging population, a demographic crisis will overwhelm the state’s ability to cope.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19295/tiktok-ban-us

Chinese law requires all Chinese companies to turn over information to the Communist Party upon request — and ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, reportedly employs more than 130 Party members to ensure compliance, among other matters.

“Its algorithm is at once simple and sinister. Download the app on your smartphone and you have given China access to all your data… And history shows they use that data for nefarious purposes.” — Adonis Hoffman, The Hill, October 18, 2022.

“First, the app can track cellphone users’ locations and collect internet-browsing data — even when users are visiting unrelated websites… That TikTok, and by extension the CCP, has the ability to survey every keystroke teenagers enter on their phones is disturbing… it could also be used to subtly indoctrinate American citizens. TikTok has already censored references to politically sensitive topics, including the treatment of workers in Xinjiang, China, and the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square.” — Senator Marco Rubio and Representative Mike Gallagher, The Washington Post, November 10, 2022.

“It’s almost like [the Chinese] recognize that technology is influencing kids’ development, and they make their domestic version a spinach version of TikTok, while they ship the opium version to the rest of the world…. If you’re under 14 years old, they show you science experiments you can do at home, museum exhibits, patriotism videos and educational videos,” said Harris, adding that children in China were limited to only 40 minutes a day on the app…. There’s a survey of pre-teens in the U.S. and China asking, ‘what is the most aspirational career that you want to have?’ and in the U.S., the No. 1 was a social media influencer, and in China, the No. 1 was astronaut. You allow those two societies to play out for a few generations and I can tell you what your world is going to look like.” — Tristan Harris, former Google employee, 60 Minutes, November 24, 2022.

In December, it was revealed that ByteDance had used the app to surveil several journalists to track down the journalists’ sources.

The United States recently banned TikTok from all federal government devices over growing security concerns. That is a good start.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19319/khamenei-question

The visit to Pyongyang was Khamenei’s the Road to Damascus moment. The lesson he learned was simple: Let others idolize you and, if things turn badly, blame those who idolize you. And, if you are in a position of weakness, just appear as a nobody or play village idiot until the tide turns in your favor.

[W]hen Khamenei was forced to enter center stage last week, it was clear that his usual tactics hadn’t worked.

Worse still, most of the key figures in the regime’s support-base within the clergy, the military-security apparatus, and the Islamic academic and cultural elite seemed to be either hedging their bets or expressing some sympathy for the protesters.

[T]he strongest probability today is that the Khomeinist system could be heading for the cabinet of curiosities.

These are tough days for the “Supreme Guide” of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. For the first time in more than three decades, he seems unable to do a Houdini number by getting out of a tight spot that events and his own mistakes have placed him in.

For more than three decades, whenever his rule was seriously challenged, his tactic was to go into purdah for a while letting things sort themselves out or, if action were needed, let others to do the dirty work. And when it became clear that things weren’t going to sort themselves out, he adopted the tactic he called “heroic flexibility,” a political version of the Parson’s position in reverse.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2023/01/how-they-count-votes-in-brazil/

Presented with an opportunity to explain the current turmoil in Brazil, Australia’s establishment media once again took the easy, lazy course by rounding up the standard cliches and memes to present as informed ‘analysis’.

To see just how bad the coverage has been, start with Augusto’s account (below) of how politics is played in Brazil. — roger franklin

____________________________

THE second round of Brazil’s presidential elections was held on Sunday, October 30. The former president, Lula da Silva, who has served prison time for corruption, apparently won 50.90% of the vote and the incumbent, Jair Bolsonaro, received 49.10%. In other words, Lula was declared winner with less than 1 per cent lead over Bolsonaro. This is according to judges of the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE), Brazil’s top electoral authority. It was an unexpected comeback for the former president, who was directly responsible for the biggest series of corruption scandals in the nation’s history.[1] Lula is “back at the scene of the crime”, according to the description made not a long time ago by his own vice-president in the presidential ticket. According to J.R. Guzzo, one of Brazil’s most accomplished journalists, the 2022 election in Brazil has been “a legal and political fraud as we have never seen in this country”.[2]  In an article entitled De Volta à Cena do Crime (Back at the Scene of the Crime), he commented:

Lula returned to the presidency via the general collapse of the Constitution and Brazilian laws throughout the electoral process – the result of an unprecedented meddling of the judiciary, which was entirely illegal in each step of the process. The basic fact is that the judiciary, with Justice Alexandre de Moraes issuing orders and Lula in the role of its sole beneficiary, did everything it could for any neutral observer to conclude this was a rigged election … Basically, Supreme Court justices and its electoral arm, the Superior Electoral Tribunal, put together piece by piece a mechanism designed to favour the leftist candidate. The first step was for these unelected judges to simply overturn the four criminal convictions against Lula and, with it, perform the “magic” of disappearing with all the dirty record which precluded him from being a candidate.[3] 

But there is a rather decisive international element in Lula’s victory as well. Just after a few outlets called the election in Brazil, U.S. President Joe Biden orchestrated a rapid international embrace of Lula. In a statement released immediately after the result was officially announced, Biden claimed that Lula had won “following free, fair, and credible elections”.[4]  In short order, Canada’s Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron, and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak all released statements congratulating Lula. “The people of Brazil have spoken”, said Trudeau, writing within an hour and a half of the result.[5]

In August 2021, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan visited Brazil to issue the following warning to the Brazilian president: do not even dare even to question the reliability of your country’s electronic voting system.[6] A month earlier, in July 2021, the newly installed Biden sent his CIA director, William Burns, to travel to the country to meet with senior Brazilian officials. During that meeting, the U.S. delegation warned the Brazilian government that President Bolsonaro “should stop casting doubt in his country’s [entirely electronic] electoral process”.[7] Next, at the June 2022  Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, the Biden administration notoriously repeated the same warning that the U.S. government would not tolerate Bolsonaro casting any doubt on the reliability and security of the nation’s voting machines.[8] Since these messages came before the outcome of the election, this was a clear warning of dire consequences should the Brazilian president contest the alleged fairness and transparency of the electoral process.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/germany-arrests-iranian-national-planning-islamist-motivated-chemical-attack/

German police have arrested an Iranian national on suspicion of planning an “Islamist-motivated” chemical attack. The alleged 32-year-old Iranian jihadi, along with a suspected accomplice, was caught near the western German city of Dortmund as he tried to precure highly-toxic cyanide and ricin for a terrorist attack, German newspaper Die Welt reported Sunday.

Police said in a statement that the Iranian national is “suspected of having prepared a serious act of violence that endangers the state by procuring cyanide and ricin to commit an Islamist-motivated attack.”

The suspected Islamist duo was literally caught with their pants down. The two men were seen being “whisked away into a police vehicle in their underpants and jackets wrapped around them in a makeshift manner,” the German daily noted.

The news reports indicate that the Iranian man might have gotten his hands on toxic chemicals required for a terror attack. “Specialists wearing anti-contamination suits were seen carrying evidence out of the man’s home,” the AP News reported.

Berlin-based Die Welt reported the details of the German counter-terrorism operation:

Anti-terror investigators have arrested a 32-year-old man in Castrop-Rauxel in the northern Ruhr region, who is said to have plotted an Islamist attack. The Iranian national is suspected of having acquired the toxins cyanide and ricin for the crime. This was confirmed by the police departments of Düsseldorf, Recklinghausen and Münster on early Sunday morning.

On Saturday night, the investigators carried [out the raid] at around midnight. The scene was cordoned off over a large area. Police, fire services and rescue workers were at the site in large numbers. “We received a serious warning that prompted the police to act that night,” said North Rhine-Westphalian [State] Interior Minister Herbert Reul (…) said.